


Child's Play

by Kaiosea



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Canon Era - Book 1, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M, Mind Games, No Explicit Sexual Content, Unresolved Sexual Tension, political maneuvering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 13:00:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5870614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaiosea/pseuds/Kaiosea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recounts the first and only time Nicaise won a game against Laurent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Child's Play

**Author's Note:**

> No spoilers for book 2. There are references to canon-typical content. Timeline-wise this takes place ostensibly near the end of book 1, though there's really no exact place it would fit exactly, I just wanted to write something about Nicaise. 
> 
> Thanks very much to ouroboros for betaing! I'm really happy about getting this out before the release of the third book :D

It wasn't that Damen _wanted_ to warn Laurent about the second and imminent attempt on his life. Luckily, it was a well-understood truth between the two of them that Damen would very much like to make his own attempt on Laurent’s life, if that were all that stood between him and his freedom, and that Damen was only hindered from doing this by the consequence of his own immediate death.

Therefore, Damen told himself, it was actually a very selfish thing he was doing, repeatedly saving Laurent from being killed.

He was no more than two sentences into his warning when Laurent cut him off, lifting an amused eyebrow. ‘Nicaise only told you so that this very moment would transpire.’

Damen said, 'Didn't tell me. I saw him, in the kitchens—'

A boy with stars in his tousled curls, floating on tiptoes to murmur in the ear of a foreign lord, who had arrived with procession a few days earlier.

'—very invested in poison, for the Prince’s birthday.’ A voice like virgin honey, sweet and trickling.

‘Poison,’ the man had said, and looked quite scared. Over the cusp of his prime, his dark hair shriveled from the temples, though his face retained an obvious sort of glamor.

'The Regent,' Nicaise had said. 'Is generous to those he favours. Shall I confirm?'

Cutting Damen off, Laurent snapped, 'Do you assume anything other than the machinations of my uncle? Nicaise would never be so crude unless under orders.'

'I know what I saw,' Damen said stubbornly. He had seen Nicaise purr into the ear of the lord, who had nodded and latched a broad arm around Nicaise's shoulders. Then Nicaise had spoken of poison in Laurent's future, a redressed sign that the lord should throw his weight behind the Regent and support a certain treaty.

Skepticism dripped from Laurent’s voice. ‘What treaty?’

Damen shook his head, heat rising to his chest. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

Laurent closed his eyes, snapping his fingers. 'I’ve got it.’

‘What?’

‘A piece of advice for you, before you pay dearly for it: Always presume you were meant to see.’ Laurent’s eyes scanned his frame. ‘And distrust your eyes for good measure.'

Damen’s hands clenched into fists as he stuck them behind his back. This was his thanks for trying to warn someone of a barely pubescent boy’s attempt to vacate the throne on the Prince's own birthday.

When it was out like that, it did sound a bit—

'Insane.' Laurent turned away. 'If someone's going to kill me on my birthday, it will certainly not be Nicaise, and it will not be poison.’

‘I heard him,’ Damen insisted. ‘It will be your goblet and your plate, set before the ceremony.’

'I am going to bed,’ said Laurent. As he turned, his sleeves whirled like clouds around his wrists, and, striding away, his gait was inaudible. 

Damen shrugged. He was glad to have mentioned it to Laurent, if only for the pleasure of seeing him driven to pettiness.

 

 

The last of the delegations arrived one week before the poisoning. Altogether they numbered fifty strong, the Regent’s idea of a generous fête. From Patras, from Vask, from—

‘Akielos?’ Damen held his breath.

'No,’ said Laurent, eyes brightening. ‘Kastor has deigned to send a representative. How displeasing.’

The odds of recognition remained steadily low, so Damen ceased to worry about it. Absorbed in preparations for his own birthday celebration, Laurent had little need to look after, summon, or torment Damen, as were his usual pleasures. With his unanticipated free time, Damen picked up the hobby of lurking. Listening at doors and peeking around corners proved arduous with his stature taken into account, yet the challenge yielded satisfying results. 

From eavesdropping on a few men of Laurent’s guard, Damen discovered that the lord he’d seen with Nicaise was named Patrice, hailing from the outskirts of Vere. There, royal clout was liminal, leaving Patrice with maximal influence, as the direct overseer of the land. He’d brought along plenty of servants and soldiers, but the members of Prince’s guard spoke of them disparagingly, saying that their loyalty was scarce and their adroitness lacking. Damen himself would have felt sorry for someone unused to the machinations of the Veretian court, if, three days later, he had not seen Nicaise near the kitchens with the very same lord. Which Damen recounted to Laurent, immediately afterwards:

 

 

Nicaise was hanging onto the lord’s elbow ostentatiously, his upturned face a portrait of charm.

Patrice’s fingers twitched at his side. ‘There’s nothing to worry about?’

‘It’s only poison,’ Nicaise had said. ‘Trouble is easily avoided.’

Interrupting, Laurent cleared his throat. ‘He didn’t know you were listening, of course.’

Damen dropped his gaze, feeling set up. ‘Not exactly…’

‘Come out, spy,’ Nicaise had said cheerfully, after shooing the lord along.

And so Damen had stepped grandly from behind the corner and burst out, ‘You shouldn’t do it. For one, you won’t succeed. I’ve warned him already—’

‘And you don't know anything,’ Nicaise said, his voice cuttingly hard. ‘My instructions are to kill him, but the manner in which is mine to decide.’

Finished recounting, Damen waited for Laurent’s reaction, but the Prince was giving none.

‘Your ears,’ said Laurent suddenly.

Damen said, crossly, ‘What about them?’

'I said distrust your eyes, but I neglected to mention your ears. They’re quite impressive, I have no idea how I forgot. If you have overheard—’

'Then you think I was meant to.’ Damen passed a hand over his face and considered strangling the man whose life he was trying to save. ‘I got that part. Have fun dying.’

 

 

The poisoning did, indeed, fall on Laurent's birthday.

To Laurent’s left sat the lord, who was flanked by Nicaise, and at his right sat Damen. Slave privileges, and all.

‘Welcome,’ Laurent said, standing up with raised arms to address the room. His voice was champagne floated over ice, sweet and capriciously bubbled. His diction was unmistakably refined, and if any doubted his cultivation, his poise proved them wrong. Upon finishing his speech, he took a long draught from his ornamented glass, and the rest of the table followed suit, Damen included, though his own glass was not adorned in finery. The drink needed more sweetness for his liking.

Conversation and music returned to the party, and Nicaise asked for Laurent’s thoughts on poison.

Patrice spluttered into his glass. ‘Nicaise, we hardly need to talk about that now.’

Nicaise clasped his hands together. ‘But you know I have such an interest.’ His long eyelashes dipped with his gaze. ‘Celebrating birth reminds us to guard against death, doesn’t it?’

The lord directed a suspicious glance at Laurent. ‘I’d rather not dwell on poison. Indirect and cowardly, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I would indeed,’ Laurent said, evenly. His voice was now rather more than champagne, bodied into an excellent red wine. One that beneath its honeyed tones, was probably also poisoned.

Nicaise whispered in the lord’s ear. Patrice’s upper lip quivered, but he spoke directly to Laurent. 'You have a slave, at your own right hand?'

Damen glared at Nicaise, but the lord mistook himself as the target and quivered in his chair. Delighted, Damen quickly busied himself with a large gulp from his glass so as not to give himself away.

Nicaise fashioned his mouth into a sweet smile. ‘It’s a custom in his part. The most honored guest must sit on the _right_ , not the left. The Prince agrees, I am sure.’

Laurent’s lips barely parted. 'Naturally. If you will?'

Mid-swallow, Damen realized he was being addressed. Grudgingly, he changed seats with Patrice and found himself stuck between Laurent and Nicaise, who had deigned to follow the lord to the other side.

A rainbow trout was laid out in front of the Prince, flattened with crispy dermatology. Damen raised his eyebrows and pointed his gaze at Laurent. Patrice had no visible reaction. 

Laurent seized Damen’s ear and hissed into it. ‘Stop doing that. It doesn't make a difference where anyone is sitting. There's absolutely no poison and no reason the servers would mistakenly serve anyone but me my own feast. Besides, there is nothing illicit put in my glass.’ Straightening up, he began to explain the difficulties of discipline to the lord.

Damen hadn't seen Laurent check his glass, and he desperately wanted to verify for himself, but his quota of improper behavior was being held steady. When the plate came around, Damen found the fish unreasonably salty and washed it down with more liquor, which had a seductive taste, sweetness creeping pleasantly into his veins the more he drank.

'New bottle for the Prince?' A servant offered.

Laurent’s eyes were hard and he stared deliberately at Damen as he said, 'That will do nicely.'

Nicaise smiled, while Damen considered smashing the bottle from the servant’s hands. He could stand and yell, proclaim what he knew to everyone, but no one would believe him. Laurent looked at him. Damen’s muscles clenched and he stamped his foot beneath the table instead. If Laurent wanted to die so badly, he could go ahead and do it. Damen knew how to fend for himself.

'What's wrong with him?' Patrice asked, chewing his lip.

Laurent said, 'Wicked combination of indigestion and constipation.'

Damen had barely eaten half a plate. 

‘But what if it were poison,’ Nicaise said smugly, loud enough for not only Damen, but also his host, to overhear. ‘There’s arsenic. Peach pits. Or cyanide, though more difficult to hide. It's blue, but purple in the light.’

 _Where did you learn about poison_ , Damen wondered.

Nicaise leaned obnoxiously over both Damen and Laurent to nudge Patrice. ‘Speech,’ he reminded him. The man stood, combing back a nonexistent strand of hair from his face. His anxiety had him purpling at the throat, and his hands shook.

‘Tonight,’ Nicaise said, his voice rising, ‘Tonight and now.’

Laurent drank deeply from his glass.

Damen waited, and watched Laurent’s throat. He took another gulp from his own drink, finding it more appetizing. Patrice cleared his throat, and the room fell silent. But what followed was not a speech.

'I've been poisoned,' he said, and Damen was vindicated, lifting his chin to crow at Laurent only to find a hand reaching in his direction. A finger, brandished, and its target—

Patrice’s shaking hand was pointing at Laurent.

'And it was you!'

Below the pointed finger, grasped to such strangulation that the veins of the hand bulged into the wrist, was a silver knife.

Damen was surprisingly slow to move, his arm reaching sluggishly for any weapon at the table and landing on the largest fork he spied. His fingers scrabbled to take hold of the unsympathetic weapon, nails scraping the wood of the table through the tablecloth in his haste. He knew where Patrice’s vitals lay, and no matter the poison there was none that would take effect soon enough to cause him to fall before he reached Laurent. He turned, fork in hand, ready to induce impact—

But by then the fight was over, for Laurent had hidden a carving knife in his lap.

 

 

'It was necessary, no doubt,' Nicaise said loudly. 'The man was senile, and acted under a classic persecution complex.'

A self-important scribe took notes religiously. Damen only paid half his attention to the proceedings. Feeling strangely roused, his body was still heated from the exchange barely thirty minutes earlier, though of course he had barely participated. Patrice’s body had been cleared away from the table less than ten minutes after his death, and the blood faded neatly into the rouged tablecloth. In the meantime, Laurent had changed into an even more expansive costume, the periwinkle color setting off his light hair into something luminescent. As for Patrice, a quick search of his chambers revealed a damning set of papers. It appeared that back in his home territory, near the eastern border of Vere, the lord had been sowing discontent against the royal family, planting misinformation among the common people. This meddling had caused him to fear for his life upon receiving invitation to the royal court for the Prince’s birthday, and left him paranoid about the visit, somewhat accurately in retrospect. Under interrogation, his personal servants immediately confirmed Patrice’s handwriting, though they professed ignorance to his motives, and his terrified set of bootless soldiers easily surrendered their weapons, claiming equal lack of knowledge. Laurent had received all this information with an effortless smile. 

'When have you seen a persecution complex?' Damen asked Nicaise, feeling certain that the boy was responsible for the dead man’s downfall. The royal doctor had found no traces of poison in Patrice’s glass or any medical indication that the lord had been suffering from any sort of toxin. The whole thing reeked disgustingly of Veretian mind games. 

Nicaise got up from the table, his part performed. ‘In you, although it was one stage removed.’ He excused himself, a statement of rudeness in itself, and flounced to the side of the Regent.

Damen hadn’t the faintest design what he meant. A bead of sweat dripped from his brow.

'This was rather fun. An assassination attempt with no pretense of poison; a game of children's chairs and diplomacy.' Laurent sounded exactly one modicum of pleased about this, whispering beneath his breath so only Damen could hear.

‘Fun?’

Laurent sighed, as though he was barely restraining himself from rolling his eyes.

Damen’s lips felt heavy as they parted. He attempted to speak and found his voice lacking, throat hoarse, and realized that once again, he must have made the mistake of drinking poison. 

He told Laurent as much.

‘You are? How odd. Will you die, do you think?’ Laurent’s eyes didn’t move from his plate, where he was slicing brilliant scales off a perfect piece of fish.

‘No. But do not drink the wine,’ Damen said. ‘Doubtless I have received what was meant for you.’

'I meant,' said Laurent, giving a cursory glance to Damen's mouth. 'What I said before. There are no kinds of accidents among us.' Laurent lifted his glass, and looked at Damen properly for the first time since killing Patrice. 'Enjoy.'

The table once again toasted the Prince’s good health. There was no knowing how many of the glittering smiles read false, here in Vere.

Damen ate of the food because he could not entertain any other pleasure. It was hearty and good, from hoards of petite watercress leaves bathed in vinegar to the spiced, roasted lamb, killed only this morning. It was filling, and it was not nearly enough. Laurent carved the first slice; with his prowess in combat Damen was unsurprised at how easily the Prince’s knife slid in and out of the lamb’s ribs like slicing butter.

He supposed that was how others’ lives seemed to the Prince, cold and inanimate. Yet the grace of the gesture was unmistakable as his eyes were drawn to Laurent's wrists, thin and glassy with veins translucent below the surface, miraculously exposed by dipping sleeves of lavender gold. A reflection of beauty as much as seasoned mortality.

Or perhaps it was the poison.

He tried to keep his head down. His skin rarely showed blush, but there was no being too cautious, and there was the humiliation to think of as well. Across the table, a Veretian woman's hair caught the drizzled chandelier light in gilded waves, and at the side of the room, a slave from Patras stroked the gnarled feet of his master with slow rhythm.

Forcing his eyes back to the table, there was still the difficulty of looking at Laurent. Laurent cut his food precisely, supplied with a new dagger to replace the one he'd shed blood with not an hour earlier. Damen tried to go over the whirlwind events that had transpired, to take his mind off the heat pooling in his lap. 

After Patrice’s accusation, with Damen reacting uselessly late, Laurent had revealed his makeshift weapon from folds of heavy brocaded tablecloth, neatly blocking the man’s first thrust. Patrice had clearly been trained from a young age, judging by the reflexive parry and adequate feint, but he must’ve stopped learning when he hit late teens and utterly lapsed after that. As such it took three seconds instead of six for Laurent to disarm him in an ugly, jarring clash of reductive steel-on-steel, two seconds to climb the table, setting one foot in the soup tureen, and less than one to stab the lord in the heart. The Prince’s guard made it to Laurent’s side in seven seconds flat, suspiciously delayed and making an awful racket. And they were two seconds late and unnecessary.

As Damen had been. He had seen the whole thing happen right in front of his eyes, but his slightly late reaction had prevented his involvement in the violent, albeit swift, confrontation. 

Yet Laurent cut his food as if he had never killed. 

 

 

The festivities lasted into the night, until Damen was delirious with exhaustion. What should have been delectable proved nothing but dead weight in his stomach, compared to the desire that flared lower in him, painful and incessant. He’d quickly stopped drinking wine and other concoctions, understanding them to only further reduce his inhibitions. Knowing Nicaise, there was likely another game of find-the-aphrodisiac within them. 

Damen looked at Laurent, something he had been trying not to do, and had the odd impression that one mask was being replaced by another. It was not an expression he had seen Laurent make often, clear-eyed and languid, and he did not know what it meant. Perhaps the poison made him misinterpret. 

'Accompany me to my chambers.'

Damen's tongue caught in his throat. They reached Laurent’s doors by the time he could sculpt clear sentences from miasmic, distracted thoughts.

'You believed me,' said Damen. 'You had the knife.'

Laurent opened the doors and indicated Damen was to follow him inside. 'Nicaise would never try to kill me. If he did, it would certainly not be poison.’

Damen said nothing.

'It was by no means an attempt on my life; I am not dead, and you are merely mildly poisoned.'

Damen, mildly, continued to stare at the line of Laurent’s jaw.

Laurent said, 'Consider who is dead, and what a great service to me it is to have him as such.'

'Nicaise wouldn't—’

‘And what do you know of Nicaise?’ It was unlike Laurent to interrupt.

Damen thought he knew nothing of Nicaise and nothing of satisfaction. The court of Vere was incomprehensible; games lurking at every corner, children controlling adult affairs. In the limited light of the moon, Laurent was a shade less pale, and Damen hated himself for noticing.

‘I'm not going to try anything,’ he said instead. ‘Whatever your uncle wants, it won’t happen.’

'It was not my uncle.’ Laurent was still scrutinizing him. The gaze was so close to an ephemeral touch, and yet not enough. 'My uncle would not have given me this sort of gift.'

‘Gift?’ Damen said, dumbfounded. ‘What gift?’

Laurent's cool eyes raked his body. 'Did you not know?' He asked, abruptly.

'Know what.'

Laurent pursed his lips, unsatisfied with this. He walked to his most elegant chest and began searching through the drawers. ‘Do something for me.’

Having no choice in the matter, Damen did nothing but continue to unwittingly look his fill as Laurent bent over the drawers, picking through expensive trinkets. Straightening up, Laurent turned to face Damen, who attempted to avert his glance. Laurent then thrust his arm away from his body, and Damen, rosy and clouded, intermittently thought he was being offered an obscene hand.

'Tell Nicaise I thank him for the felicitations, and that this should be his first and only win.'

Dangling from the edges of slim fingertips like fruit swinging from the vine, an emerald lashed to a silver chain.

 

 

The corridors spoke no pleasure to Damen as he made his way to Nicaise’s chambers. The boy answered immediately, as though he’d been expecting someone, only for his face to fall after seeing who it was.

‘Why are _you_ here,’ said Nicaise . 

Damen couldn’t resist. ‘Your poison found the wrong target.’

‘Poison the Prince, why would I want to do that?’ Nicaise pouted. ‘Go away, you should be fucking him by now.’

Damen was reminded of a self-satisfied cat, grown heavy on cream. ‘I don’t do that.’ 

‘And I’m supposed to fall for that,’ Nicaise said. He turned up his nose, but the curl of his mouth said that he was wavering on whether to believe him or not. 

‘Believe what you like. Doesn’t matter to me.’

But Nicaise wasn’t listening to him, drawing together his eyebrows as he scrutinized Damen’s face. 'Though I suppose if you aren’t in his chambers… I see.’ Nicaise smoothed a curl of hair that was already in place. ‘You know. You could have me now. You won't be satisfied in your state, but unlike some others, I don't retract my offers.’

His youth remained lewd as the first time Damen set eyes on him, and equally as unappealing.

Damen also thought about Laurent, what Laurent would say if he knew. ‘No thanks.’ Still weary, he remembered his objective. ‘Here. Laurent wants you to have this.’

Nicaise’s face glowed as he examined the jewel from every angle. Held up close to his face, it loomed larger than his eyes. After a patient minute, Damen made as if to leave, only for Nicaise to seize his arm. Damen easily shook free.

‘And did he like mine?’ Nicaise burst out, his fist snapping shut around the emerald. His eyes darted about the corridors, but no one appeared.

Damen said, ‘I’m here, aren’t I? So I guess he refused your gift.’

Nicaise frowned, inviting wrinkles to an unmarred face.

'Why would you have thought _you_ were the present? You are the tag on the wrapping, an accoutrement to the prize already claimed.'

Damen thought he would never understand the politics of Vere. 'But—the gift?'

Nicaise’s tongue darted over his lips. The idea of a cat became less compelling, as there was naught a whisker on his young, smooth cheeks.

'Why, it's the Prince's honorable birthday. What more does he love than a well-played game, dear and his for the winning?'


End file.
